Letters, Extracts from Coirespondence, Notices, (Sfc. 239 



birds, including a Saltator, Planesticus, Cyphorhinus, Polioptila, 

 Buarremon, Thalassidroma, Spermophila, kc." 



Mr. Salvin writes from San Jose, in Guatemala (December 7, 

 1862), as follows:— 



" I have all the collections of the wet season to send off this 

 month ; there are several additions amongst them. I have got 

 the nest of the Swift I described to you in a former letter. Fancy 

 a nest made of seeds of a grass, glued to the under horizontal 

 surface of an overhanging rock, two feet long, with entrance at 

 the end ! I do not feel sure of the genus ; it is not a Chcetura, 

 but more like a Panyptila. Perhaps, if new, sancii jeroma 

 might be an appropriate name for it. Since I last wrote, I have 

 had a collection of three hundred birds from the Pacific coast : 

 it contains a few additions, but no novelties, unless it be a Hum- 

 ming-bird ; but this, I expect, is the Amazilia cyanura of Gould, 

 whose specimens are from Realejo. It is a green Amazilia, with 

 a steel-blue tail. During the last month I have done nothing 

 in natural history, having been much occupied photographing 

 the ruins at Copan. In this respect I have been more success- 

 ful than formerly, and have brought away four dozen pictures of 

 the various carvings found there. The ruins are most curious.^' 



It would appear that the Tooth-billed Pigeon of the Samoan 

 Islands [Didunculus strigirostris) , which is of so great interest to 

 naturalists, as being believed to be the nearest living ally of the 

 Dodo, is not quite extinct, as has been said to be the case. It 

 will be recollected that examples of this bird have hitherto only 

 reached scientific observers on two occasions. The first of these 

 was the specimen originally described by Sir William Jardine in 

 the ' Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' and afterwards 

 figured by Mr. Gould in his ' Birds of i\ustralia' (vol. v. pi. 76). 

 The second was upon the occasion of the visit of the United 

 States Exploring Expedition to the island of Upolu, when two 

 examples of this Pigeon were procured, as described by Mr. 

 Cassin in his volume on the Zoology of that expedition (p. 281). 

 It has been repeatedly stated that this curious bird has of late 



